Free Texture Friday - Rising Color

This week's free texture is a lemon yellow gradient.

You can download the full-res version below.

This photograph was captured in my backyard.




Download the full res image.

Free Texture Friday - Blurred Sky

This week's free texture is a soft pink and deep blue cloud abstract.
You can download the full-res version below.

This photograph was captured in my backyard.




Download the full res image.

Full Moon at 1000mm

Bad Moon Rising

The moon has enthralled mankind since we were first able to look up at the night sky.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine loaned me his 500mm mirrored lens with 2x tele-converter. At 1000mm, plus the crop factor of the DX sensor, it is easy to literally fill the frame with the moon.

The downside to the technology used is that it is a fixed f/8 lens which means a slower shutter and high ISO to compensate. And at 1000mm the camera shake generated simply by the shutter actuation was shocking and frustrating, even on the most stable tripod Manfrotto makes. To prevent the shutter actuation from making the image blurry, getting my shutter to 1/1200 of a second, I had to ramp the ISO up to 3200 which means noise was awful.

I am still intrigued with getting one of these for myself. They are affordable at about $190 for the kit. I just wish they can make them at about f/4. But until they do, I will make do with what I have available and my friends who love to share their technology with someone eager to try new things.

To find out more feel free to visit, Amazon.

Interesting Skies

Interesting Skies

Simple Clouds

Some times a sky adds as much to an image as the subject does. But a sky can also make an image boring.

Flat blue cloudless skies are about as boring as backdrops come.

But a sky with even the simplest clouds can make an image pop. Clouds can make or break a landscape image or a portrait where the sky is an element of the background.

Simpler Clouds

The sky doesn't have to overly complex with the cloud structure. In many cases something simple and light, like the sky in the image on the right is all it takes to take an image from bland to superb.

Complex Cloud Structure

 Here, in the image on the left, is a complex cloud structure at work. It would be easy for this complex structure to take over the image and over power your subject.

This is a great type of cloud structure if you are shooting a landscape, as the it can add a dynamic volume to the sky that can enhance the image.

But if your subject was a person, this type of cloud structure could take over as the subject making the person seem less important. While this can be true, it isn't always as composition choices play an important role in this decision as well.

Here a prime example of a complex cloud structure used to accentuate the landscape being photographed.

The cloud structure adds a cool, brooding tone to the image in contrast to the warmer toned landscape beneath it.

The key is balance of composition between the landscape and the brooding sky. If the horizon had been shifted down further, to make more of a minimalist type of image, the sky would have over powered the subject. But because the horizon is a little higher, falling more into the rule of thirds, the balance makes the image work by making the sky an element and not the subject.

Here is another image where the brooding sky enhances the image.

The aggressive nature of the sky compliments the subjects, soldiers heading into battle. The sky lends to mood.

Because the sky is in balance with the rest of the image, it is an element, allowing the viewer to still notice and realize the soldiers while adding that element of impending doom, generally at the subconscious level.

The image to the right is an example of an image where having some clouds in the sky would have made this portrait better.

The relative flat blue nature of the sky makes that section of the image boring.

Now the image on the right would have had a completely different impact if the sky had been like the image of the soldiers above. And again it would have been completely different if the sky has been like one of the fluffy cloud images posted at the beginning.

You can't always have the perfect sky for what you want, so you have to work with want you get. But if you have the option choose between days with clouds and days without, always choose a day with some puffs of white in the sky. Your images will turn out so much better.

Luck - The Good and the Bad

Sunset on the Water

Seneca, a first-century Roman philosopher, once said luck is when preparation meets opportunity. That is a great explanation of good luck. Bad luck on the other hand is the cause of one of two things; the lack of opportunity or the lack of preparation. 


I take ownership of my own luck, at least as much as I can. If I am not prepared it is my own fault. That's right, my fault.


If I know there is something that I want to photograph, I make sure sure to do what I can to make myself available to do it. 


Sometimes luck means I have to abandon something else that I want to do, like stay at home and have a quiet evening with my wife. But each and every time, luck requires me to say yes to opportunity when it comes knocking. 


And opportunity knocked on my door yesterday. And I said yes.

Faded Brillance

My friend, and fellow photographer, Liz Smith, called me up yesterday and asked me if I heard about the possible Aurora Borealis happening. I said, "No". 


She asked if I would be interested in going out and shooting it. I said definitely. It has been a goal of mine to just see an Aurora Borealis since I was a kid and learned about them. One of the biggest challenges has been my luck.


See I have spent my entire living at or below the 45th parallel, that is halfway between the North Pole and the Equator, in Oregon. As luck would have it, the Aurora Borealis don't dip down to the 45th parallel very often. 


Another bit of luck is the fact that I live in the state of Oregon. If you are not from around here, there tends to be considerably more overcast days than not here in Oregon. That is not a complaint, but simply an observation supporting my story of luck. I don't complain about the weather like so many others I know. I love cloudy skies during the day because cloudless skies are boring for a photographer.

Starry Sunset

To be an aspiring astrophotographer living in a perpetually overcast state like Oregon usually can be, is sort of bad luck. Being an aspiring astrophotographer looking to photograph the Aurora Borealis and living beneath the 45th parallel is a double tap to the bad side of luck. 


So when opportunity presents itself, even if it is only a thirty percent chance, I jump on it. Thirty percent was the chance that the  Aurora Borealis would be visible at the 45th parallel.


The skies were clear; opportunity. The sun had sent a sizable, M-Class, coronal mass ejection (CME) right at us; opportunity. I made myself available; prepared. I tracked the coming solar storm online; prepared. But alas the Aurora dream would remain such, a dream. 

The Aurora Borealis never made an appearance at the 45th parallel because the CME was not strong enough; no opportunity.


But I didn't let that take away from the beautiful evening and great company of my wife and Liz. 


We even had a surprise encounter with another photographer friend, Nathan Smith and his wife and son, Heather and Noah.


All of us made the best of the Aurora Borealis show, sans the Aurora Borealis, and had a great time and captured some amazing images of sky, both during and after sunset.

In the end the Aurora Borealis never made the opportunity available. But I made some beautiful photographs and shared a beautiful evening with some wonderful friends and my wife. It was a lucky day after all.


Are you prepared? If not; Why not?

Different Worlds

This shot is about detail. The type of detail you can only get with HDR. I shot two HDR series using this scene and processed each seperately because I wanted two different photos from this beautiful scene. See if you can tell the difference between the two. I promise... it is exactly the beach and view shoit with the same camera, lens and focal length; just a few minutes apart at a slightly different angles. I also neither added or removed elements from either of the shots, in case you were wondering.

Stormy Highway

 

A photographer doesn't pack up his or her gear in the face of some foul weather. Instead the photographer sees the opportunity to capture a unique moment that others fail to see.